Ibook Specs: 7450e 1.07 GHZ - 1.25 G Ram - ATi 9400 - 30 something GB HDD
So I have ubuntu mate and Lubuntu available, but I would like to use Mate instead. When I run Mate if I click ANYTHING, ANY button, the radeon driver hangs and dies. I don't know why and I don't know how to set kernel params because it doesn't use grub and just goes straight to yaboot.
My first issue is the radeon driver and if theres anything else wrong we'll get there eventually but if anyone can give me a hand THANK YOU ;D;
Also, how did you install mate? From a fresh Ubuntu Mate install or installed from Lubuntu? If neither works, it may be a bug with Mate rather than the driver.
May be bad power and performance state settings, auto settings can cause major issues for allot of amd hardware (not all). I have talked about this problem until blue in the face, use the search function.
Uhhh, yeeaahhh, theres not a way to really search for it nor is it an AMD part. I'm jst hoping someone here has some info. I've been trying on IRC all day.
What Ubuntu version are you using? perhaps try an old one. Once you have a kernel that's stable you could install it into something more up to date, assuming yaboot does that
So far I've tried Lubuntu and Ubu Mate. Lubuntu can install but crashes constantly and Ubu Mate doesn't even run without falling apart. I gave up. Its on OSX 10.4.11.
ATI never made a GPU numbered 9400. You must be thinking of another number or you mean an Nvidia 9400. Even so, the really old reverse-engineered Nvidia drivers aren't good adding on top of the slowness of the old hardware.
If you're on a PowerPC Laptop, use Lubuntu, GTK needs 3D acceleration. Save the heaver Desktops for the Power Mac G5.
When the 9700 was such a big deal and ATi had a big grouping with apple, apple wanted some cheap shit shot GPU's for their ibooks. They weren't gaming boxes, they mere work horses. So they worked out a deal that ATi would make 9700's and 9800's for the powerbooks and as long as there was a demand for the ibooks, then they would ship 9400's. A 9400 was basically half of what was left of a faulty Mobility Radeon 9500 / 9550 and they just made it capable of being able to render video and pass 3D processes to the powerPC processor. I never really understood why my powerbook needs a 9700 Pro when it never actually uses it.
I've done A LOT of research bud. NV never had a 9400. The 9800 was a fluke in 2009 because they didn't have anything new. There were 900 series chips in the 90's but I know those were not PC chips, I just don't remember what they actually went to.
Damn, ATI again, I once rebuilt some laptops with win7 and none of the generic drivers supported the graphics chip, had to use a crappy old ones from the manufacturer.
If it's stable without X at all you could possibly get somewhere using tmux, with the console in native resolution you may have enough characters for split windows too. gpm is there for mouse also